Ep 351 - The Wind Cries Freedom - A New Sequence of Episodes: Intro and Chapter 1

Eight years ago I wrote something I called RPS 2044 . It was an oral history of a future American revolution RPS was short for Revolutionary Participatory Society as described by various characters who helped conduct it and who experienced it .

As such , the book was fiction , a novel , of course , but it was a novel designed to read like non-fiction , like a factual account of a possible future history . So I wrote it and then felt hold on . Ideally , this shouldn't be a book , it should be a film . So I immediately sought to make it over into a script .

That was a bit of hubris , but nonetheless it required considerable learning , but for better or worse , I did it . Then I tried to get Hollywood to pay attention to it and indeed to make it happen . That was quite the experience , really quite the experience , but I ultimately failed . Really quite the experience , but I ultimately failed .

So it sat the idea and the execution up to that time it all sat . Then , about two years ago , I turned back to it . I decided to retain the idea of an oral history but to refine or augment and fully rewrite the text , add and delete , change , and I did so . So now I have a book currently titled the Wind Cries Freedom .

Yes , it is a Hendrix reference that I have to try to get published . Honestly , I think the odds are pretty slim , but we'll see . The book is 150,000 words . I am told by people who know the current publishing world better than I do that unless I cut it by a third or maybe even more than that , I have no chance .

Few publishers would even look at something so long I am told , much less wind up accepting it . I have to admit that I find that both sad and utterly ridiculous . Some kind of length maximum allowed Even hard to believe . Some kind of length maximum allowed Even hard to believe For me .

The idea that there should be a maximum length allowed for new fiction writers what nonsense that is . Imagine a publisher saying we love the idea , we love the substance , because we know your work and we take the worth of its ideas as a given , but it is just too long , not for us .

Two problems , if we assume substantive merit , can nonetheless arise from length . Perhaps people won't pick it up to read it and perhaps production will cost too much to accept . Those are the two possible problems , I think . But actually , if you think about it it becomes obvious .

It is the assertion that few , if any , would read such a long work by a first-time novelist , much less by a first-time novelist . They don't know . That is paramount . What a sad thing for anyone to think , much less a publisher , much less for a publisher to accept as an unchallengeable norm .

I , the publisher , like it , believe it's important , but I don't think anybody will read it , so I won't publish it . Regardless , I have this book in hand . It is fundamentally new now and quite unusual , as well as quite long and , of course , highly political . So I need to send it around and I will albeit thinking that success is unlikely .

So I need to send it around and I will albeit thinking that success is unlikely . That being the case , while I await what may turn out to be publisher silence or maybe something better , what next ? Well , to decide , I have to ask myself is this any good ? Is it readable ? Does it say things worth saying . The goal of it is not to entertain per se .

It is not a novel in that sense . It doesn't mean to titillate nor to induce laughter , though that would not be unwelcome . Nor is it a novel that mainly tries to explore the human condition . It is instead a novel that means to read like , feel like and affect like an oral history .

In this case , it means to make plausible the idea that in our future we can , you can , revolutionize society . So it is a novel that means to convey lessons regarding how others admittedly hypothetical others did just that , how they made a revolution . There is an interviewer Of course there is . It's an oral history . His name is Miguel Guevara .

There are 18 interviewees . They have 18 names , 36 counting both first and last , and many others are also drawn from history , like Miguel Guevara , not to replicate or to mimic historical characters , but just to acknowledge and pay respects . The point is , however , that the interviewees are a diverse bunch . They have different origins , histories and priorities .

They tell their stories . As a result , they bring some drama and some human condition , but that is decidedly not the priority focus . This is not an oral history of the participants . It is an oral history of a revolutionary process .

The interviewees do not mainly present their own life lessons , though some do naturally arise as the interviewees describe their revolutionary thoughts and actions . This is an oral history of social change lessons , and the lessons are front and center throughout .

So why am I going to construct many coming episodes and present them every so often , though not every week , based

on segments of the Wind Cries Freedom ?

I have chosen to give that a try because I think these hypothetical interviewees have lots of not only interesting , because I think these hypothetical interviewees have lots of not only interesting , not only moving , but also highly relevant things to say , and because they say these things in a manner likely quite different and hopefully highly engaging and congenial to

your ears . The interviewees address us from the future . Their lessons are relevant to our current and coming choices . At times I will likely , I suspect , maybe interject spontaneously a bit of my own reactions to their words .

That may occur because in reading it to you , I realize there is something I should cut or something I should add , and I then comment on that , or because I am simply provoked to evaluatively react .

But I will try to keep my interjecting to a minimum so that what you hear is what the book currently includes , though if you have ideas for changes , that would be very welcome .

My guiding idea was to try to present a fictional account that reads like revealed truths and that will , as a result , speak to people who doubt that another world is possible , or who believe it is possible but deep down doubt we can ever win it , or who think we can conceivably win it but wonder how , wonder what kinds of steps might succeed .

Fair warning According to my word processor , the book is currently a little over 150,000 words . Episodes of Revolution Z have been up to now , at most about 10,000 words , and often half that . The book has an introduction and 25 chapters . Since the oral history episodes will run interspersed with other episodes with guests or on other topics .

This sequence may be with us for quite some time , perhaps even a year or possibly more . So I hope you find it worthy . I also hope you will sometimes be moved to email me to let me know what you do find worthy and what you could do without , or even find damaging or wrong . Find worthy and what you could do without , or even find damaging or wrong .

You could also pose any questions in the Znet Discord channel and I will certainly reply as best I can . Okay enough , spontaneous prologue To begin . Here is the short introduction and also the relatively short first chapter to the Wind Cries Freedom .

The introduction reads like this Before my eyes , in the shadows of a dying empire , a new wave of collective awakening stirred , tentative , fragile but unmistakably alive . I watched as one watches first sparks in a dry brush , uncertain if they will ignite a blaze or die in the wind .

How would those who seek a better world go from time-bound to time-less , from narrow to comprehensive , from rebellion to revolution ? Could their history reveal paths to another world ? Was our Revolutionary Participatory Society , rps , applicable for more than just our time and our place ?

This is , I interject , an introduction by Miguel Guevara to this oral history written in the future . I am Miguel Guevara . In the storm-tossed 1960s , my future parents exited their childhood and threw themselves into struggle . They dared to envision a better world . They didn't sit on a sideline . They didn't idly dream , they fought .

They named me Miguel , but stamped upon me a nickname heavier even than blood Che . Perhaps they sought to provoke me , or perhaps to remind themselves , but I never wore it . I go by Miguel , though I write rather like Che did . My parents held tightly to their dreams . But precious time , relentless and cruel , interfered .

Did my parents and their predecessors fail because the quest was impossible ? Or did they fail because they made mistakes , were inadequately prepared or were even misdirected ? Whichever , it was , a grotesque monument to a society drunk on power and greed ascended . I watched them , watch Trump . I saw their souls recoil .

They gave their youth energy and ideals to their cause . Then Trump made runes of their aspirations . Their revolution did not bear the fruit they had imagined , not right off , at any rate . My parents died in the thick of Trump's second reign , their eyes searching the horizon , wondering what would their child's success look like ? What would a better world include ?

They believed it would come . But was that delusion ? Was it wishful thinking ? Was my own confidence just their madness lodged in my brain , surviving beyond its expiration date , or what ? My parents never spoke to me about my name and I never asked , despite its influence . I didn't seek armed struggle or militant banners . I sought to sculpt fiction .

I wanted to move hearts , but no matter how much effort I expended , fiction didn't yield . I did not have what fiction required Fiction . My first love refused me . I wept , I drank and I said Fine , if I cannot invent , I will reveal . I will write truth , and truth , it turned out , welcomed me , albeit slowly . I found a job , a beat and a deadline .

For five years I poured ink onto the pages of a Latin American news project . I anchored each essay to the frenzy of the news cycle . I offered facts , never lessons . Names , dates , events , yes , but not wise . Not where it came from , not where it was headed .

Over 500 times I delivered 1,500 to 3,000 words , each word wrapped in the moment , never stretching beyond its own packing date . I obeyed my job's rules . The Times presented endless crimes to chronicle . I chronicled and my soul went dry . I hadn't worn chains , but nor had I marched free . So I stumbled away into odd jobs and a year of disconnected days .

Then I read an oral history of the 1960s . Its questions were passable but not piercing . Its answers hovered around individual memories , not the movement's pulse . The interviews did not reveal deeper motives . They did not convey guiding methods . They offered no harvest of lessons to further refine . They reminded me of my earlier essays just facts .

Then I read another oral account whose interviewee was Fidel , my namesake's partner in arms . This too did not lift the curtain on collective process . It did not sing the song of vision or strategy . It narrated events , not methods . It recounted battles , not purpose . Yet something in those two oral histories stirred me .

There wasn't an intimacy to offering voices untarnished by academic filters , and so I began to interview those then participating in our time's struggles . I asked what did you do ? Why did you do it ? What were the problems ? What were the successes and failures ? What did you learn ? I did not chase the details of their personal lives or even of the events .

I sought motives , I queried methods , I emphasized goals . I wanted to reveal lessons . No-transcript . Revolutions are messy , but even in their chaos there

is rhythm . First , revolutions awaken the people . They reach out , open eyes , raise consciousness , ignite hearts . Then , with some but far from all people assembled , they challenge power . They confront , disrupt , dismantle and contest . Finally , power subdued , they construct , they give form to the future that they earlier only dared to dream .

These three phases consciousness raising , contestation and construction do not follow neatly one after the other . They intertwine , all occur . Always , though , the emphasis shifts what begins as mostly consciousness-raising becomes mostly conflict and finally settles on mostly creation . The third , more creative phase , transition , becomes a new battlefield .

It takes hold when the forces of transformation no longer mainly resist current evil but instead mainly establish new life . The state , a cold machine built to serve capital and hierarchy , transforms to become a collective organ of people's will . Transition begins when the past , still fighting , is no longer in command and the new begins to direct history .

In the interviews I gathered , my partners in struggle described where they came from and especially the situations that gave rise to their radicalization . They reflected on their early actions , the sparks and stumbles that began their march .

They charted the birth of their organization , revolutionary Participatory Society , or RPS , not as a lonely idea but as a living movement . They chronicled how it emerged , faltered , regrouped , matured and surged . They gave witness to its organizational heartbeat , daily work , victories and wounds .

They tracked its evolution up to the beginning of transition , along the way they addressed gender , race , class , power , ecology and internationalism . They explored how RPS reached toward solidarity and what it demanded from leadership .

Perhaps most important , they examined how the revolution turned its gaze inward , how it faced its own flaws and contradictions , not to excuse or bemoan , but to overcome . They offered stories not of purity but of perseverance , not of saints but of partners struggling to shed their inherited burdens and stand taller as a collective force .

They offered vision , not abstract but lived . They offered principles of strategy , not abstract , but one through trial . Their stories at times got deeply personal , raw and even wrenching . Their stories at times got almost tediously academic . Their history is not a novel with a single hero who rises through fire .

Their story is not a dry textbook with rules and footnotes . My interviewees did not chase trends . They did not imagine far-off technologies or speculate about inventions yet to be born . They did not over-detail fascism's orange mask or the planet's ecological decay . They lived all that .

No , they gave a glimpse into what it feels like to walk through fire , what it takes to win . Let me speak plainly about the task I had . I collected a mountain of testimony , unfiltered , undigested . But then what next ? What should I cut ? What should I retain ? How should I combine segments into chapters ?

How should I turn chapters into a whole personal thread , offered the raw and intimate human dimension , it is what someone with talents vastly beyond mine might have shaped into a wonderful novel . It revealed the messiness of real people , their pasts , their dreams , their wounds and their triumphs . It breathed life into the revolution .

Through that personal thread one can feel that people like us can rise and win . That my interviewee's world , or something broadly like it , is possible . The second thread , the political thread , was sober , disciplined , strategic . It was not emotion , it was organization .

It could have become a political manual , something cold and sharp , filled with lessons and only lessons . It was the infrastructure of revolution , the vision , the how-to . But of course the personal is political and the political is personal . So I had to weave . If I leaned too heavily on the personal thread , I might lose the political lessons .

The oral history might become a series of fascinating tales , full of drama but stripped of strategic direction . On the other hand , if I lean too heavy on the political thread , I might drain the revolution's blood . The history might become a lecture , precise , yes , but lifeless .

It became clear that from the sea of voices I had to extract those elements that would simultaneously carry both fire and structure , what was most moving in its humanity and what was most revealing in its lessons . Too much of either and the other would suffer .

I should also not present what I personally found most stirring , nor would align best with my private conviction . I should not convey my own preferences , nor even what I imagined would delight a reader the most .

No , I should faithfully represent the voices of the interviewees and only weave their words into chapters that would not only hold the reader's attention but also spark real and practical reflection . But there was also a trap I refused to fall into . I had seen it too often in those earlier testimonies .

I spoke about Pages heavy with the size of repression , it's stench clubs , it's jails , it's victims Lamenting the fallen . My questions had to aim higher to celebrate the work of organizing , to dig out the lessons in how to win , to learn how to blunt their blows , but not to dwell on how much their blows hurt , that pain we all know too well .

To succeed , oral history had to remain grounded in the lives , struggles and insights of those who dared to imagine and build a better world , my interviewees and those like them , those involved . Nonetheless , in the end , the work's meaning lies in what you do with it .

The plausibility of the stories told here , their power , truth and relevance will be determined by how they live in your imagination , how they move in your hands . Revolutions are not the work of heroes . They are not the legacy of martyrs . They are the patient , persistent , courageous labor of millions .

We were not born to watch history , we were born to make it Okay . So that's the introduction to the book . Chapter one follows . I hope it's clear enough now . The book is an oral history . Miguel Guevara is the interviewer . There are diverse interviewees .

They're talking about something that happens not in our time , not in our place , but in a world exactly like ours . Chapter

1 is titled Oral Histories End Civilizations . Beginning In it , miguel Guevara offers some excerpts from the then newly elected President Malcolm King and Vice President Celia Noether's final oral history interview sessions , in which they discuss their then recent election experience and plans .

Miguel thus begins his book at its end point , at the start of participatory revolutionary transition , obviously expecting then or obviously we can expect then , after this brief intro chapter , to go back and go through the process . To start , miguel asks Mr President , are you kidding ? The new Vice President , celia Noether interrupts Call him Malcolm .

I do , we all do . He will get pissed if you keep that up . But , madam Vice President , miguel , seriously , I am not a statue , I am not a label , I am Celia . Well , okay , celia , malcolm , what a pleasure to celebrate your victory . How do you feel ? Eager , cautious , but Miguel , ideas won not us .

But you and Celia traversed the country , you campaigned , you won , right , celia ? Yes , malcolm and I walked , rode and flew a lot . Malcolm and I walked , rode and flew a lot , we talked a lot , we got hoarse , sure , but millions of volunteers won , still more so . The movement won .

Miguel , do you remember , at the convention after choosing candidates , when we were celebrating and Malcolm spoke , and I think I can repeat it ? But , malcolm , they were your lines , so you repeat it . Okay , celia , I think it went like this Some decades ago , someone running and winning for president with my views was an impossible dream .

Then Bernie Sanders brought some hope . Black Lives Matter exploded . Activism flourished Me too . Horrible COVID , incredible Palestine Support and the Existential Battles Against Trump and Company . And finally , on to RPS . And here we are . Celia asks Miguel , what are your first reactions to the Oval Office ? Look at these portraits .

My immediate reaction is the same as anyone with eyes . We need to redecorate . Miguel asks Would removing a lot of mass murderers from the walls be historical savagery or delayed justice ? The latter , don't you think ? And in good taste too . We can keep the rogues' gallery for historical accuracy , but I don't want them perpetually staring at us .

What about your immediate program , asks Miguel ? It will be what we have said . Of course , the movement will build local assemblies to hold a constitutional convention and revamp government . It will enlarge the Supreme Court to reflect society . It will build housing , schools and clinics .

It will drastically downsize and reorient the military , pardon many prisoners and renovate judicial procedures . It will further innovate energy and all production to attain ecological balance . It will further restrict AI , further support workplace takeovers and much more . Of course .

Yes , okay , the movement will empower and federate neighborhood assemblies , demolish income and wealth inequities , tax and repossess from the rich , test and refine participatory planning , advance collective self-management , transform living arrangements and daily life to preserve and extend diversity . This government and the movement itself will follow the will of the people .

Rps has waged a quarter-century journey of ceaseless struggle . It's time to build new institutions . It's time to transform to our new society . Miguel asks Malcolm , do you agree ? Do you feel pressure for RPS to do all that ? Do you feel fear ? Look , I'll be straight with you . I feel what I'd call a sense of historic responsibility .

Yes , there's pressure , but it's not the kind of pressure that weighs you down . It's the kind that gets you moving . It's when you feel history tapping you on the shoulder and saying now's the time . We have an opportunity

not just to fix what's broken but to build something vastly better . We can help profoundly transform this country . That's exciting , but sure it's scary too . If people in power make wrong calls , if we ignore the will of the people , we could lose ground . But if we stay focused , if we govern with boldness and compassion , lose ground .

But if we stay focused , if we govern with boldness and compassion , we can move forward fast . We're in a pivotal moment . We won an election . Now we've got to help build the future . Miguel asks do you think there is sufficient unity to accomplish all that ? Let me be very clear . Early on , things were tough . People disagreed .

Sometimes those disagreements got heated . We weren't just debating the system , we were debating each other . I've been in those rooms among our friends debating . I felt that tension . But we had to ask ourselves a different question not who's right , but how do we move forward together ? That was a hard question .

It was not always comfortable , but we found our way , not through lectures or speeches , but through strikes , protests , organizing in the streets , the schools , the prisons . We didn't wait for the perfect moment , we didn't wait for permission . We started creating child care centers , new laws , alternative schools .

We started winning local victories and those victories gave people hope Celia , myself , others . We didn't lead by telling people what to do . We listened , we learned , the people led . That's how solidarity was built , miguel asks . Do you remember ?

Just after election day , I was in New York City when RPS's Alexandra Voline stepped up to introduce the city's mayor , bill Hampton ? He wore an RPS cap , dressed head to toe in green . He looked overjoyed . A massive crowd faced the stage , lit like it was New Year's Eve . Above it waved a banner that echoed the words of Arundhati Roy .

Quote Another world is not only possible , it is ours . Yes , I remember , but Celia and I were already in Washington , not New York , so we watched a wonderful video of it .

Our friend Alexandra was the emcee and she said here we are , inauguration day , another milestone on the way toward fulfilling our aims in every workplace , school , home , neighborhood , city and state . I give you your mayor , bill Hampton . Celia takes up the account .

And then Bill , in that way of his , lifted his arms , half conductor , half brother , half dreamer and gestured across the undulating crowd . The air pulsed . It felt like midnight , on the edge of a new year , like the birth of something too large to name . It felt like the fierce , improbable buoyancy of hope Bill's voice carried low , steady and then rising .

Quote politics used to be competitive and elitist . Politics was money-grubbing , hypocritical bureaucracy . Politics served wealth and power . It dripped with innocent blood . As mayor , I struggled to reduce its inanities , its criminalities , often to little avail . Politics was mostly disconnected professionals dictating from above . Now , politics is you you demand , you enact .

It wasn't a speech , not really . It was a public remembering a collective redefinition , a summoning . And when I watched the video , still in the governor's office , still performing the theater of that crumbling institution , I knew exactly what Bill was talking about .

Not just the surface of his words , but the deep undercurrent , the ache and exhaustion of having tried to maneuver within the rotting architecture of officialdom , the bitter taste of wanting to believe while knowing the structure itself was a lie .

So even then , even before he reached the marrow , I felt a sting of joy , a strange sensation of tears , not from sorrow but from something braver , something wilder . And then , as he gathered every filament of memory in the crowd and tried them together , he spoke again .

He told maybe a million in the street , maybe more , and many millions witnessing it through glass and screen , of a boyhood spent in the shadows of a kind of silent apocalypse .

Of a boyhood spent in the shadows of a kind of silent apocalypse , he said he suffered nightmares of big planes silently , ominously , almost gently , dropping massive parachutes and , beneath each chute , swaying to a devil's dirge , huge cylindrical nuclear coffins drifted down .

There was a moment after that , an inhale that seemed to sweep the crowd into stillness , a silence so complete . It felt like something sacred or terrified , or both , and Bill , sensing it , paused , not to manipulate , not to perform , but to let the truth settle . Then he smiled . The smile was not simple .

It held sorrow , yes , but also the wildness of resistance . And he said but I woke up . We all woke up . We got into each other's nightmare of war , climate collapse and fascist violence and we turned them into colorful , inspiring dreams of freedom . Vision replaced fear , Confidence replaced doubt , action informed and reflected thought .

And so now we celebrate a new milestone . We dance , we cheer and tomorrow we will carry on . All of us , we are now joint architects of our collective future . This was not rhetoric , it was a spell of sorts , maybe a map showing us where we had come from and insisting that the future was ours to claim .

Miguel asked Malcolm , what was in your mind when you heard Bill's words ? What I saw in that moment were memories of my own childhood , my own nightmares I used to see cattle cars , not with animals , but with corpses , human corpses . It was people left behind , people lost to cruelty , to indifference , to systemic failure . I saw an endless killing train .

It went from ocean to ocean and back and back again , over and over . In my nightmare it was humanity's horrible realism Dead by guns , dead by starvation , dead by preventable diseases . Cattle cars with windowed walls . So I saw in Cattle cars of those who died too young or who died cruelly , horribly , unnecessarily .

But when I looked at Bill's audience , a million people cheering , alive , hopeful , and I felt this is different . These people are standing up , they're eager to continue , they're eager to build a future rooted in dignity and justice .

And I thought to myself rebels and rakes , outcasts , the gentle , the kind , poets and painters , bricklayers and truck drivers , doctors and dreamers , saints and sinners , those incarcerated in jails and those incarcerated in boring subordination , those long in struggle and those still entering struggle .

We all need a moment's rest , a moment to celebrate as we set out to win still greater victories to come . And Celia , she said , and she was right . And listen , I'm not much of a dancer , but even I wanted to dance that night . So we said let's do it , let's go big .

Every city , every county , 2,000 celebrations and people danced , not just for what we won , but for what we still had to fight for . They danced for the future because , for the first time in a long time , we could feel it in our hands . Miguel asked but how , malcolm ? Not what do we seek ? How do we attain it ?

Okay , let me say something that might make some folks uncomfortable , but stick with me . Let's talk about Trump . Yes , that Trump , the man , was racist , he was sexist , he was a demagogue , he was a human cattle car , but he did want change . He wasn't content to manage the system , he wanted to break it .

His tools executive orders , top-down decrees , authoritarian power , fear . Now , let's be absolutely clear . Our goals could not be more different . We want equity , we want dignity , we want justice . But one similarity we want to change the institutions too .

The difference is we don't want power at the top , we want power in the hands of the people , power to the people . Beyond different aims , do you have a different approach in mind , asks Miguel ? Of course , our approach is fundamentally different . We don't believe in saviors , we believe in movements .

The real leadership , it's not in the White House , it's in our communities , our schools , our workplaces . Sure , maybe we'll sign a few executive orders , but not to impose change from above . We will do that only to carry forward what people are already doing at work , in worship , in struggle , in celebration .

Our main tool , like always , will be organizing conversations , people in motion . That's how you get durable democratic change . It doesn't come from tweets , it comes from door knocking , from talking , from organizing . That can't be ignored and , yes , there are still skeptics . There are still people who don . From organizing . That can't be ignored .

And , yes , there are still skeptics . There are still people who don't believe things can really be different . We've got to reach them too , not with slogans but with substance , not with guilt but with solidarity . What's different now from recent years is from here on , we're not mainly fighting against

the current system , we're mainly building the next one . We're showing what's possible . And I'll tell you I believe that with our vision , with the organizing power we've built , with the unity and resolve we've shown , we're going to win . Not just some of us , all of us , the people , their passion , their persistence , their hope .

They've always been the movement's compass . They are our leaders . Our job is to amplify that . Are there still obstacles ? Of course , are there still structures to challenge Absolutely . But our election marks that we're no longer mainly resisting , we're constructing . We're not mainly protesting what is , we're mainly building what will be .

That's our path ahead and no , it won't be easy . But I think RPS vision , adapted as we go , grounded in the real lives of real people , will take us forward step by step , more and more of us , all of us , starting now . Okay , so that's the end of the first chapter .

Next time we return to the book , we'll do the second chapter , maybe even the second and the third , depending on their length . It'll go back to the beginning , to the formation of RPS , the organization that carries through the revolutionary process , and it will trace the events , the feelings , the thoughts , in particular the methods , the strategy and the vision .

And that said , this is Mike Albert signing off until next time for Revolution Z .